street imsa

Street IMSA

Past and current takes on the IMSA look

Do you have some pictures you have taken?

Hoover Chan's Street IMSA

I've owned my car for approximately 20 years. The building process was definitely a learning experience. My car started life with a normal 2.4 ltr., then 2.9 ltr, 3.0 ltr., 3.1 ltr., 3.2 ltr. and 3.3 ltr. I've done everything from Mikuni side drafts to my current Turbo Motor which produces over 400hp and 440 ft. lbs. of torque on 91 octane and relatively low boost levels.

Ricky Freeman built my cage. After the car was assembled with all these modifications, I really didn't know what to do with it. From the time I was a very young adult living in a one bedroom apt. to now being a father, that car has been a part of my life. Strangley, I didn't know what it was being built for, it seemed that I just wanted to build something fast, but never drove it, especially now that I'm a lot older and can't see myself driving it on the street. To date, my new motor has about 300 miles on it and kept in my shop. Earlier this year, I decided to step up and make it more of a race car, but ended up realizing that it and I would not make it to the track, so it just wasn't realistic. So what next....I decided that since I knew so many auto-x people, that it would be great to have that car in SM2 for kicks. Within days, I stripped the interior to redo wiring and engine components for heat treating. The suspension bushings will be changed soon.

Hoover Chan

http://www.turbohoses.com/240Z.htm

The former Erik Bernstein car now lives in sunny Florida and has received several upgrades.

More Street IMSA

This car was built by Joel Anderson and then sold to Art Bubb.

photos from the Jack Atkinson collection

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS CAR?

My name is Andrew Furia and I was the original builder of the IMSA 240Z you have pictured under your street section. It is the blue/gray Z-car pictured under Joel Anderson's tan IMSA Z car, two pictures. I bought the car in 1979 and built it over the next 5 years. I was a friend of Joel Anderson, and his son Doug. That car is very trick... It had every conceivable Datsun Comp./ Mac Tilton, part on it. Joel built me one of the first 3.0 liter engines, direct drive gear box, Tilton suspension, etc. It was wild. The bodywork was done in San Jose, by Steve Doudy at Sport Performance. They created the molds from either Joel's or Frank's parts. The flares were lower than the original race flares so that the cars wouldn't have much space between the tires and fender lip. I traded the car for a Porsche RSR clone track car in about 1988.

It was my first car I owned. I now Vintage Race a Lola B2k/10 in the WSC/GTP class and Indycars in the HSR BOSS class. We just returned from the Mitty at Road Atlanta. By comparison, the Datsun would be a bargain to

race and I could complete the transformation to a full race car.

If you have any information regarding the car, I would love to buy it back....!!! Perhaps you could post an ad or message. (e-mail this website,zlalomz@gmail.comand I will pass along the information.)

I would also be interested in finding any vintage IMSA racing Z car of Frank Leary, or Joel Anderson cars.

I have lost all pictures of my IMSA Z, contact with Joel Anderson and his son Doug. If you have any information on them let me know. Joel has got to be close to 70 now! We would work on the car in his advertising shop.... What great memories.

Brian Dickens

This teal dream is most recently the product of Auto Sport body shop in San Jose CA, (formerly Sport Performance, owned by legendary Z guy Steve Doudy). For a period during the eighties and nineties Sport Performance was, shall we shall, sort of locally famous for putting out of a number ‘very trick’ G-nose Z’s. I personally owe the inspiration for my own Z to a pair whose provenance can still be traced to Steve Doudy’s erstwhile body shop. The mint green car pictured on this very website is one example. But even today the genius of Sport Performance still lives on at Auto Sport.

Except for the original G-nose kit, all subsequent customizations and styling cues were products of my own dollar-sign-seeking imagination. Some of the more obvious examples include a custom louvered hood, chrome billet grill, the unique fitment of a rear wing from a 2002 Pontiac Trans AM Firebird, and a custom paint job with Firebird-style, body-length racing strip.

Fairly recently I was forced to abandon my maiden 15” HRE 505 wheels in favor of some newer 17” polished lace rims, also from HRE. HRE was happy to custom drill my wheel centers, thus providing me with the requisite 4-bolt lug pattern. In essence I was forced to do the wheel changeover owing to a dearth of tire availability for the older HRE 15’s. Several years ago Pirelli stopped making its P-zeros in the sizes I required. Then subsequent to that Yokohama followed suit, making it difficult if not impossible for me to get tires at all. The new 17”’s have ostensibly solved that problem.

I have done little in the way of suspension modifications beyond what most guys do when installing the kit (unless they intend to race). The car was dropped using a set of Eibach lowering springs and Tokico shocks. The sway bars are heavy duty and were manufactured by Suspension Techniques.

The interior in essence has also been completely redone, including the door panels, seat upholstery and a two-tone dye job on the rear deck panels. Long ago I acquired both a Momo steering wheel and walnut gearshift knob.

Let me state right at the outset that my G-nose is not one of those fearsome

creatures with apocryphal names like Hydra, Hybrid or Scarab. Nor is it one of those slaverous, snorting beasts (usually outfitted with a supercharged LT1 V-8) which prowls around town kicking butt and taking names. But with that being said the car is still pretty darn quick.

To make the car go as fast as it looked just parked at the curb, several years ago I took a trip up to Rebello Racing in Pacheco CA (They have since moved to Antioch). Rebello used to do a lot of older Z engines. At one time they even maintained their own Nissan 240SX racecar. For my application they more or less recommended their standard bag of go-fast tricks—nothing too high tech, just good old fashion, no-nonsense, hot rod high jinks.

For starters they bored out the block out from a 2.8 to a 3.0. After shaving the heads for increased compression they added a high lift cam and installed a Webber big throat throttle body. They also polished the valves and did a couple of other things I can’t quite remember. Later on I visited Far Performance in Mountain View CA and had them fix me up with a set of air-injected headers. That upgrade was followed by the addition of a very cool Flowmaster muffler with dual chrome-tipped exhaust. More recently I further improved the exhaust stream by eliminating an inline resonator and greatly enlarging the pipe between the collector at the back of the headers and the muffler intake. This no doubt netted me a few additional horses.

As is often the case for anyone involved in such endeavors, there is sometimes a tendency to exaggerate—but of course where’s the fun in not over inflating a little. Nonetheless I shall try not to engage in excessive hyperbole. To that end allow me profess without attribution that my Z engine probably does not meet the magical threshold of 300 horsepower, though I am quite confident it has glimpsed the high side of 280. And though that may not sound stratospheric, especially compared to those bellowing SCCA V-8 monsters, the car is still quite light and hence goes really, really fast. It’s still quicker than my 1994 Nissan 300ZX convertible 5-sp (normally aspirated) and even faster than my one time ’87 IROC Camaro automatic outfitted with a 5.7 liter Corvette engine. The bottom line for me is—no complaints. Let’s just say that if the gas stations aren’t too far apart, then it’s the fastest thing between gas stations. Okay—maybe not. Hey, everyone lies a little.

Brian Dickens

Ron Graves - Newport News, Va

The car has the original 2.4L engine that has been bored. It also has been fitted with nissan comp pistons, cam, and triple 40mm weber carbs. The car rides on 17"x11" CCW wheels in front and 17"x13" CCW's out back. Car also has a custom cage color matched to the candy orange exterior. I also have a '74 IMSA bodied Z as well as a '72 RHD 240 that is soon to be sporting IMSA flares.

DAVID MOODY

David Moody

photos Alan Poindexter Z.O.N.C. Z

CHASE WILSON

John Curry, Orlando Florida

A good find in a California field, photo Mike Restivo

Another California craigslist find

This picture is courtesy of DavyZ on HybridZ.org ( His future wife but not his car )

The same car at the De Anza jr. college autocross

photos Steve Parmley

A couple of street cars from England shot by Len Welch a Gnose painted like the famous Samuri Team car known well throughtout the the UK. White car photos by Alan Poindexter

For Sale in Tennessee awhile back

This car is now owned by Alex in Alabama and is receiving new paint. Here are some pics from the move.

Steve and Lelslie Pratt

Just ran across this web site and decided to make an input. I had in the late seventies and early eighties a 71 240Z that was a project, just loved the BSR IMSA GTU cars and wanted one for the street, as I planned for the construction I got with BSR for body parts and wheels, the wheels came off of one of the race cars, BBS three piece, rears 15X15 fronts 10X15. At that time Scarab was doing V8 conversions, and being sort of a Hot Rodder, I thought that would be a good way to go. I installed a 350 hp 327 cu in Chev with a Muncie 4spd. After I had it on the road for awhile I broke the rear end, broke a tooth on the pinion gear, instead of rebuilding I went for a later model R-200 Diff, that was probably the best thing I did, it was pretty much bullet proof after that.

After owning and driving the car for about five years I decided I needed a Porsche, sold the car and after some time finally got a pretty good 911. There’s many a day that I regret selling that Z car, it was fun, unusual, which I really like, and it was a ball to drive. The new owner still has the car, doesn’t drive it much, I’ve been after him for years to buy it back, had my chance a few years back but it turned out he wanted 2K more for it than I sold it to him for 25 years before, it was kind of deteriorated, kind of depressing to see it in that way. I still talk to him and hint that I would still like to have it back, if I come into some money he might consider selling back to me, here’s hoping.

Just read something that said IMSA allowed 14” wide rims on the rear, I swear I measured mine and they were 15”, kinda confused on that one.

Steve

Update

I have a bit of an update for you on the street IMSA GTU that I built sometime back. Finally made a deal with the guy who purchased it from me, I've now just got to get the money to him and figure out when and how to get it back here. With the winter weather, the route to my home can get hit with some serious winter weather and I'm not going to chance it. So, I'll have to look for a good weather window to make the trip. Attached are some pictures of the car taken one year ago, it's been sitting for approximately 5 years, maybe more. As you can see it's pretty filthy, the paint has aged considerably. There will need to be some spruce up work done. I took a look at the car again this last December, it looks the same as the year previous, just more dust and dirt accumulated. When I go to pick it up I'll try and get some pictures of the move.

Eventually, when I get it up and running, I'm planning on doing a little Auto Cross with it, besides the street trips.